coondoggie writes: "he Mission: Impossible TV show famously started most episodes with a tape recorded mission message that ended with: "This tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds, good luck Jim." Then it melted down in a burst of smoke and flame.DARPA researchers seem to want to take that sort of destructive notion quite a few steps further by designing electronics — particularly smart phones and other devices — that can melt or at least partially dissolve to the point that they would be useless to anyone else who came across them."

I can see security conscious IT firms using them too. Government contractors, survival freaks, you name it. I think the whole thing has market potential. And, as easy as it is to accidentally burn out resistors when you throw some extra power at them, I imagine the whole thing can probably be done with regulator technology we already have. Only problem is getting rid of the data itself in a way that's not forensically recoverable. That might take an extra step or two, but again, probably not a monumental ch